RAM: Gaming can be RAM intensive, and 8GB is what we recommend for even average productivity tasks. If you can, you should go for 16GB on a gaming PC. A laptop with a GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti usually comes with 8GB. Once you get to a GTX 1060 or higher, some will come with 16GB of RAM. If you can’t get your laptop with 16GB of RAM now, consider upgrading it in the near future. Memory is upgradeable in many gaming laptops, so this is an area that you can consider boosting later if you’re handy with a screwdriver.
If you're aiming to game professionally or just want a leg up on the competition, a dedicated gaming mouse is the way to go. Way beyond a Microsoft "Comfort Mouse," today's gaming mice take the cheese—er, cake—where extra features, tailored designs, and sheer horsepower are concerned. Additional buttons and hyper-accurate laser optics are a given on gaming mice—the best also deliver strobing lights, customizable weights, and more buttons than a Men's Wearhouse.
NEWARK, Calif. & LAUSANNE, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Logitech International (SIX: LOGN) (Nasdaq: LOGI) today announced that it has agreed to acquire ASTRO Gaming, a leading console gaming brand with a history of producing award-winning headsets for professional gamers and enthusiasts. Logitech and ASTRO, together, is the number one maker of headsets, mice, keyboards and streaming webcams for PC and console gamers.

Gaming systems have higher-end components than run-of-the-mill consumer laptops, so their prices will be consequently higher, but the range across the category is huge: from under a grand to $5,000 and up. The best budget gaming laptops start at $800 and can go up to about $1,250. For that, you get a system that can play games at 1,366-by-768 resolution on high graphics quality settings, or at a full HD (1080p) resolution with the details turned down some. Storage may be a hard drive, or a modest-capacity solid-state drive (SSD).

There are also advanced features you won't find in a regular mouse. Look for additional buttons that can be programmed for specific PC games. Many gaming mice — both optical and laser — offer multiple DPI (dots per inch) settings to control the sensitivity, and some of them even allow you to adjust the DPI on the fly, so you can switch between settings without pausing your gameplay. And not only are these models the coolest mice when it comes to their standard look, a growing number of gaming mice boast RGB lighting for customizable effects in millions of colors.
This mouse can be called the direct competitor of Asus Spatha but has been around for quite some time. It is again, a wireless/wired combination, and unlike Spatha, it does offer an ambidextrous design making it a top pick for many users. One should keep in mind that the Ouroboros is strictly made for the enthusiasts, and it doesn’t offer features such as the RGB lighting, though considering how it’s a pretty old mouse, Razer may release an updated version with the Chroma lighting in near future.
As far as RAM is concerned, there’s really not all that much to be said. Entry-level laptops generally have 8 GB of RAM which is enough for gaming. More expensive computers are often equipped with 16 GB or 32 GB of RAM which could be useful if you are a frequent user of graphics design or video editing software. With the exception of EVGA models, no laptop is able to adjust its RAM frequency beyond JEDEC certification limits.
Most gaming laptops have a “chicklety” keyboard. If you can’t stand this type of keyboard, your only real alternative is to connect a better-quality external model. However, if you only ever use your keyboard for pressing the ZQSD keys, its quality will not really be an important factor. The same can be said about a computer’s trackpad which can always be replaced with an external mouse for greater in-game accuracy.
If you want a gaming laptop for less than $1,000, get the Lenovo Legion Y530. Because of its lower-powered graphics card, the Y530 won’t play demanding games as well for as many years to come as our top pick, but it keeps cool and has a bright screen, a comfortable keyboard, and a responsive trackpad. The Y530 is also about a pound lighter and significantly more compact than the Dell G7 and G5, but it’s a pain to upgrade. We recommend the model with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics processor with 4 GB of dedicated memory, an Intel Core i5-8300H processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 128 GB solid-state drive, and a 1 TB hard drive. But if the Y530 costs more than $900 at the time you’re shopping, we recommend saving up for our top pick and its more powerful graphics processor instead.

You'll see both ordinary hard drives and swifter (but lesser-capacity) solid-state drives (SSDs) in under-$1,000 laptops. The occasional 15.6-inch-screen model might offer a small-capacity SSD boot drive alongside a secondary-storage platter hard drive, though this is more common with 17-inch laptops. Opt for this dual-drive approach if you can find it and afford it. The smaller SSD would be home to the operating system and a few favorite games, and the larger, more economical hard drive would host the rest of your games and other programs that don't need quick loading times. (It's indeed possible to split your Steam game library across drives.)

Take your PC gaming on the go with a laptop. A good gamer laptop will outpace the newest gaming consoles when it comes to sheer computing power, but you can also enjoy a great gaming experience with many low-to-mid-tier gaming laptops. A key element for the best PC gaming experience is computing power, so good gaming laptops are usually more powerful than standard laptops.

There is an interesting thing about that. The mobile 1060 3gb isn't the same chip as the desktop part. The 1060(m) 3gb is actually the same chip as the desktop 1060 6gb, but with 3gb VRAM. I wasn't aware of that when I bought my laptop with the 1060 3gb, but after doing additional research, I was pleased to see that while the desktop parts naming is disingenuous, the mobile parts are as the naming scheme implies.

Like many other top cheap gaming laptops, the MSI GE62 includes the great Intel Core i5-6300HQ Quad Core processor. This CPU works perfect for current games and can easily be stepped up from 2.3 to 3.2GHz, using Intel's Turbo Boost technology. Unlike some other budget laptops we recommend, this one has a more powerful GPU though. You get the amazing NVIDIA Geforce GTX970M with 3G GDDR5. As you can see from the GPU's 3DMark score above, it's a very, very fast gaming graphics card with plenty of room for current games on high settings.
The Dell G7 15 is a mid-size gaming laptop with middle-of-the-road GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics, middling battery life, and—you guessed it—a mid-range price tag. But this system boasts a stellar feature that sets it apart from the crowd: a six-core, benchmark-crushing Core i7 processor that’ll thrill content creators. Indeed, the G7 15’s overall performance is only a step or two behind that of our current top pick among 15-inch gaming laptops, the thinner and lighter MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE—and it costs about $600 less. Despite a dim screen and an occasionally too-hot chassis, this is still a worthy contender.
A guide to getting the best gaming laptop under $500 can be a little tricky because of the budget constraint. But thanks to our team of experts, it’s finally here. Irrespective of whether you are a student, a household, an employee, or a developer, there is one common aspect which everyone uses their laptop for. Any guesses? Well, it is undoubtedly the gaming caliber of a laptop of which every user aspires about. Not all the laptops out in the market can be justified as a gaming machine, and not everyone can afford the expensive gaming laptops. Therefore, we have brought you the best available budget laptops in the market which are ideal for gaming along with all other day-to-day activities.
Though, as with most budget laptops, you will get a slower 5400rpm hard drive. However, seeing as more and more of us are moving over to digital copies of our games it makes sense to remove the DVD drive and replace it with a HDD caddy and a good SDD. This will allow you to reap all the major benefits that an SSD offers for gaming and day-to-day use.
If you can’t spend more than $1,000 but still want a laptop that can play games, get the Lenovo Legion Y530. It won’t play new games as well for as long as our top pick, but it keeps cool and has a bright screen, a comfortable keyboard, and a responsive trackpad. The Y530 is also about a pound lighter and significantly more compact than the Dell G7 and G5, but it’s more of a pain to upgrade yourself.

Traditionally gaming laptops have been three things: big, heavy, and expensive. That isn't always the case any longer, as components have gotten smaller and more portable, and increased competition has caused prices to fall quite a bit as well. You still generally get what you pay for in terms of performance and portability, but you can get a great portable 1080p machine these days for less than $1,000 — sometimes way less — which was rarely the case just one generation of hardware ago.

Most gaming laptops have a “chicklety” keyboard. If you can’t stand this type of keyboard, your only real alternative is to connect a better-quality external model. However, if you only ever use your keyboard for pressing the ZQSD keys, its quality will not really be an important factor. The same can be said about a computer’s trackpad which can always be replaced with an external mouse for greater in-game accuracy.

When buying a gaming notebook, get one that will last you for a few years. If you can afford it, get at least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 for basic VR support. That choice is more important than RAM and the CPU, though you should pay attention to those as well. Storage is the most likely to be upgradeable, but more is better, as games take up a lot of space. Decide if you prefer high resolutions or faster displays and consider what software will be helpful to you, but realize that you won’t get great battery life. How all of those work together determines just how well a gaming notebook does on the Tom’s Hardware test bench.

Gaming laptops are a tough sell. To provide the power to play games at decent settings, they sacrifice portability, battery life, and value compared to non-gaming laptops. At the same time, a $2,000 gaming laptop is less powerful and less upgradeable than a $1,200 desktop gaming PC. And a $1,000 ultrabook will handle non-gaming tasks just as well at a third the weight and with four times the battery life, much better build quality, and a better keyboard and trackpad.

Avram Piltch is Tom's Hardware's editor-in-chief. When he's not playing with the latest gadgets at work or putting on VR helmets at trade shows, you'll find him rooting his phone, taking apart his PC or coding plugins. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test.
When it comes to customization software, I'm a huge fan of Razer's Synapse 2.0 app. It lets you create profiles for all your compatible Razer hardware (mice, headsets and keyboards) in addition to turning your keyboard into one hell of a light show. And if that isn't enough you can access your creations via the cloud on any laptop. For creating a kick-ass show on your keyboard, I'm fond of both Alienware's FX software and the SteelSeries Engine, which also keeps track on your keystrokes. That comes in handy if you're trying to keep track of your kill rate or some other important input stat.
The Acer Predator Helios 300 has Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics and a 144 Hz high-refresh-rate display, but its WASD keys reached 110.2 °F, the hottest of any budget gaming laptop we tested this year, even with Acer’s Cooler Boost software enabled. Its fans sounded high pitched and a bit grating, it had a poor 3.5-hour showing in our battery life tests, and it comes with too much bloatware.
While its performance for modern games will be on the lower end, its value is excellent and it will at least allow you to play games such as Overwatch, CS:GO, DOTA 2 and other popular titles will be playable, albeit at reduced settings. One aspect of the E 15 E5-576-392H that may seem impressive is that it packs a 1920 x 1080 15.6-inch display. Sadly, it is of poor quality. Its lowly TN panel offers poor viewing angles and the colors looked washed out, which are issues that generally plague TN panels.
It is in the graphics department that this RoG Strix laptop has the upper hand, as it comes with a GPU none other than the GTX 1070, a high-end beast that masters 1080p gaming and can handle 1440p more than competently. Sadly, though, the laptop doesn’t come with a 1440p display, as the 17-inch screen really could have looked really good with such a high resolution. Nonetheless, the 144 Hz refresh rate is still here, so nobody will be left wanting when it comes to performance.
While its cheap case is somewhat disappointing, it does hide some pretty imposing components under the hood. It features a Full-HD eDP display with 94% NTSC color and the familiar Steel Series Keyboard that we usually see with MSI laptops. However, the keyboard is said to suffer from flex, which is said to be due to the cheap plastic casing, and it doesn’t have backlighting. On the inside, you will find a variety of components that will surprise you, considering its low price tag.

With that out of the way, that doesn’t mean that gaming mice are just gimmicky because they are not. Thanks to their high DPI, programmable buttons, customizable macros, and a lot of other features that are suitable for gamers. That’s why the market is so saturated with gaming mice, there are just too many options for the average gamer to choose from, and while it is certainly a good thing, it also makes a customer really, really confused.

Corsair didn’t just release a product range suited for every budget oriented, as well as well high-end gamers, but they made sure that all the products don’t share a drastic difference between the price they have and the features they give. That means that whether you are buying their mid-high range K70, or their enthusiast range K95, you won’t be sacrificing on the features a lot. That is something really good, and something a lot of other companies don’t follow.
However, there is one important thing a lot of gamers don’t know. Buying a gaming mouse doesn’t necessarily mean that your skills will improve by a drastic measure. Sure, a gaming mouse might help you in some ways, but if you are buying it just for the sake of improving your skills, then you are wrong. In case you don’t know, most professional, e-sports gamers are actually winning all the competitions without the use of a gaming mouse, and yes, it does come as a shock, but they have actually gone on the record and stated that they prefer a standard mouse better simply because they are used to it.

All right, let's talk about higher-end affordable gaming laptops: Spending a little extra will give you two things: First, your gaming laptop will perform much better for high-end games on max settings. Second, your laptop will be much more future-proof so that you can enjoy games a few years down the line. In short, if you have a little extra budget, it's definitely a smart choice to get one of the higher-spec gaming laptops reviewed below. Let's talk details!

But if you want to play new games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on ultra settings, you’re better off with a desktop or a gaming laptop with more powerful graphics. A $1,200 desktop is much more powerful, and you can easily upgrade it in the future. And if you opt for a higher-end gaming laptop, you’ll be able to crank up those graphics settings for years—rather than months—to come.
In the process of writing this buyer’s guide, we began by searching for manufacturers that offer one or more gaming laptop product lines. Next, we selected the computers that have the best price-performance ratio (based on tests conducted by a number of online websites such as Tom’s Hardware and LaptopMag). Finally, we organized these computers by brand: Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, and MSI.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060: Laptops with 1060 cards can play taxing games like Mass Effect: Andromeda or Witcher 3 without sacrificing some of the cooler visual eye candy, including water reflections and natural-looking hair at 1920 x 1080. You might have to tweak the settings a bit at 4K, but not too much. Even better, you can hook up your Rift or Vive headset up for a mobile plug-and-play VR experience.
There are not all that many graphics chips to choose from (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, 1060, 1070 or 1080…). Your selection will depend on your particular needs and budget. A GTX 1070 or 1080 would probably be overkill for gamers interested in playing MMORPG games such as World Of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 and would only prove useful when connecting to an external 4K display. Facing off against the GTX 1050 and 1060 can be found a few computers employing a Radeon RX 560, 570 or 580 graphics chip – but not all that many.
Gigabyte/Aorus - Gigabyte and its high-end subsidiary Aorus offer a diverse lineup of gaming systems. Where Aorus laptops are svelte, lightweight powerhouses with high-end specs while Gigabyte systems tend to be bulkier, more colorful and less expensive. All Aorus laptops and selected Gigabyte systems have two-year limited warranties while the remaining systems only come with 1 year.
But if you want to play new games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on ultra settings, you’re better off with a desktop or a gaming laptop with more powerful graphics. A $1,200 desktop is much more powerful, and you can easily upgrade it in the future. And if you opt for a higher-end gaming laptop, you’ll be able to crank up those graphics settings for years—rather than months—to come.
It's tax refund season (hopefully!) and you may be shopping for an affordable gaming laptop that can handle not just e-Sports and lightweight games, but demanding AAA titles as well. That system is easy to find when you throw more than $1000 at it, but lower your budget to $850 and the search becomes more challenging. The awesome news is that they're out there, and I've rounded up 4 that won't leave you with buyer's remorse.
That said, a maxed-out Core i7 CPU is less crucial for gaming than it is for processor-intensive tasks such as video editing and media-file production work. With current-generation Intel CPUs, you'll get plenty of pep even from a four-core "Coffee Lake"/8th Generation Core i5. A Core i7 of the same generation is actually a hefty six-core/12-thread processor that, we'd argue, is overkill for casual gamers who need to mind what they spend. So, our bottom line: Opt for a Core i5 or i7 chip with four true cores if you can; a six-core chip is gravy.
As far as the gaming performance of this laptop is concerned, the HP 15-ay191ms comes with the 7th Generation Intel Core i3 processor paired with the 8GB of RAM and 1TB of hard drive for storage. Thanks to the integrated Intel HD graphics this laptop can run some of the popular older games at low to medium graphics settings. Moreover, the audio on this laptop is powered by DTS Studio Sound which makes watching movies and gaming on this laptop more immersive.
I originally bought another mouse that was 30 dollars made by Bloody and I returned it to get this 10 dollar one instead. I don't regret my decision. I've only used it for a couple of hours and it already feels great. I wanted something that was colorful but could still handle playing video games online like League of Legends. Does it feel cheap? Yeah I mean it's pretty cheap, you can tell it is. But it handles well, moves good, and clicks way better than the other one I had bought. This mouse is definitely not something you'd throw around because it's lighter plastic.
You're essentially paying $30 more here for the wireless ability compared to the wired version of the G403 Prodigy, and that's the most important aspect to consider. While the $70 G403 stands out as one of Logitech's more affordable feature-focused mice, the wireless edition packages that same functionality with the added flexibility of using a USB dongle and ditching the wire. Rudimentary testing revealed very impressive response for a wireless mouse, so we think the added flexibility is worth it.
Most gaming laptops have a “chicklety” keyboard. If you can’t stand this type of keyboard, your only real alternative is to connect a better-quality external model. However, if you only ever use your keyboard for pressing the ZQSD keys, its quality will not really be an important factor. The same can be said about a computer’s trackpad which can always be replaced with an external mouse for greater in-game accuracy.
"Not bad...It's ok...Love it with my new laptop!...I am an avid gamer and I had recently purchased a gaming laptop and with any pc game, it is essential to have a mouse, but not just any mouse, I was in the market searching some of the best gaming mouse there is, and I came across this, and this is in my opinion the best gaming mouse there is since its by Razer, and what sold me is the chroma lighting, and the fact that it is the tournament edition, meaning professional gamers use it for eSports."
When it comes to customization software, I'm a huge fan of Razer's Synapse 2.0 app. It lets you create profiles for all your compatible Razer hardware (mice, headsets and keyboards) in addition to turning your keyboard into one hell of a light show. And if that isn't enough you can access your creations via the cloud on any laptop. For creating a kick-ass show on your keyboard, I'm fond of both Alienware's FX software and the SteelSeries Engine, which also keeps track on your keystrokes. That comes in handy if you're trying to keep track of your kill rate or some other important input stat.